Organizing context: nurses' assessments of older people in an acute medical unit

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Abstract
The paper presents findings from a study of how older people are assessed and cared for in an acute medical unit. The aim of the study was to reconsider nurses' assessment practices in relation to organisational context. Drawing together ethnographic methods with discourse analysis, the study develops an approach to studying nurses' assessment practices and aims to demonstrate that nurses go beyond entering their relationships with patients as individuals. Rather, nurses' assessments of patients can be considered as processes of alignment that help nurses accomplish complicit managerial and medical objectives, and shape their own identities.